"Their View" Archives:

Articles syndicated here will remain in our archives for at least a year, depending on our server space availability. Archives will be established effective next week.

What They Thought March 14, 2004

R.A. Hawkins
Jonathan David Morris

Click here for columnist bios

Jonathan David Morris:
To Rock the Vote, Knock It, or Block It?

"Voting is for Old People."

That's the phrase on an Urban Outfitters t-shirt that's drawing Al Jourgensen's ire.

Who's Al Jourgensen? Al Jourgensen is the founder of the self-described "post-punk dance unit" -- i.e., band -- Ministry. He's also involved with a group called Punk Voter, whose goal is to "organize, educate, and invigorate today's youth" with an eye towards political proactivity. Item No. 1 on their modest agenda: Mobilize half a million kids over the age of 18 in an effort to vote out George Bush.

That's where Urban Outfitters' "Voting is for Old People" t-shirt comes in. In a letter to company president Richard Hayne, Jourgensen writes that the shirt is "irresponsible" -- a mark of "recklessness." He writes: "Voting is the right and obligation of all voting age citizens. Your company markets to a young clientele and a voting demographic that are severely under-represented and need to be encouraged to exercise their Constitutional Rights as Americans."

"In an ideal world, I would love to have your product removed from your stores," Jourgensen adds. "In a next to ideal world, you could sell 'Voting Matters' shirts."

Well, that's bunk.

I've only been to Urban Outfitters once. It was last summer during a trip to Chicago. While there, I bought a model DeLorean from Back to the Future, which sits on my shelf, unassembled, still in its box. I also bought a t-shirt. It depicts the Son of God, arms outstretched, bearing peace signs a la Dick Nixon. The words beneath it? "Vote Jesus."

Want to guess how many 18-year-olds will be writing-in Christ at the ballot box this year? Odds are: Not many, if any at all.

This is what gets me. On the one hand, Mr. Jourgensen wants kids to roll out of bed and head to the polls on Election Day because it's their "obligation" as "voting age citizens." But on the other hand, he'd have us believe their minds are so manipulable that they can't be subjected to a sheet of cloth with five words on it, for fear that they'll stay home instead.

Well, if your average high school senior's brain is as empty as this guy's suggesting, why do we need their input at all? I mean, if they're only going to go with whatever they're told to go with -- such as the openly partisan politics on Punk Voter's anti-Bush Web site -- then I'll take a non-voting varsity football star over a voting one any day. I don't need some teenaged dreamer telling the government how to spend my money. Ya dig?

I don't know Jourgensen. I don't know his true intentions. If he says he cares about kids, I'm willing to take him at his word. Quite frankly, though, I question the positive impact these get-out-the-vote youth groups are so often said to have. They push for a sort of political engagement that, to me, seems self-serving. Vote for the sake of voting. Vote because it "matters." Vote because "you should."

Take Rock the Vote, for example. Rock the Vote was founded by recording artists "in response to a wave of attacks on freedom of speech and artistic expression." An MTV staple throughout the '90s, and the host of a Democratic presidential debate last fall on CNN, Rock the Vote aims to "empower young people to create change in their communities and take action on the issues they care about." So far, so good.

But while I applaud Rock the Vote for so vigorously fighting in the name of free speech, its energies seem misspent. I'd much rather see them focus on things such as Clear Channel's recent firing of Howard Stern. That decision had nothing to do with so-called decency standards. He didn't even do anything indecent! As Stern himself has pointed out, he was yanked for condemning the government a day before Clear Channel was set to testify before Congress. He was sacrificed on the altar of the FCC.

Yet, instead of fighting the good fight against said government agency, Rock the Vote's devotion is voter turnout. Its street teams and online registration programs, along with its support for laws like the Motor Voter Act, serve to feed the same federal beast threatening free speech in the first place.

This makes me wonder which matters more here, quantity or quality? And if it's the former, what's the point of voting at all?

Think about it. Kids are being taught to believe that voting is noble, in and of itself. When I was a kid, I was taught the same thing. The fact that you vote -- "no matter who you vote for" -- is all that counts.

A few weeks ago, I came across New Jersey's Republican Party Web site, on which they proclaimed: "It's your civic duty. Register to vote." Small wonder they'd say that. After all, they want you to vote for them. But don't you see what they're trying to do here? They're trying to shame you into going to the polls. Not just the Garden State GOP, either, but every GOP, and DNC, in every state across the country. They want you to think staying home on Election Day means you simply don't care.

Well, here's an idea: Stay home because you do.

If you think this sounds like giving up, I say voting out of "duty" sounds like giving in. And look who you're giving in to: Career politicians who vote themselves tax-subsidized raises, who pass laws like the "Bipartisan" Campaign Reform Act.

Do you know what the BCRA does? It paves the way for a full-fledged police state right here on American soil. Think I'm kidding? Imagine there's an attack on NYC the day Bush is there accepting his nomination later this year (September 2nd). Thanks to info collected through that other bipartisan gem, the Patriot Act, the feds can round up average Americans -- dissenters, "enemy combatants," and so on. And because the BCRA makes it illegal to take out an "issue ad" 60 days before the election (November 2nd), groups like the NRA and ACLU will be powerless to warn us not to answer the SWAT teams knock-knock-knocking at our doors.

I'm not saying this stuff is going to happen. It's certainly quite a stretch. But the mechanisms are in place now. It would all be perfectly legal. And it'd only be the next logical step for a government which kidnaps Cuban toddlers at gunpoint.

I look at it like this. Your choices for president this November are John Kerry and George Bush. Both parties will tell you it's crucial the other guys lose. Even if you don't care for the man your party trots out, they're going to tell you to vote for "the lesser of two evils." This makes no sense. The lesser of two evils is still evil, isn't he? Why should we give whoever wins -- not just "our guy," but that dreaded other -- permission to mess with our lives? So he can blow a few billion more on the miseducation of kids so fragile they need protection from $28 t-shirts? Hey, look: I know a bargain when I see one. And this? This isn't a bargain.

I'm not trying to sound the death knell on democracy here. But I do believe we should ditch this idea that democracy automatically means freedom. Democratically elected officials can commit "a long train of abuses" -- as Thomas Jefferson called it in the Declaration of Independence -- just like the tyrants we claim to despise abroad. Showing up at the polls out of loyalty only means you're giving them "the consent of the governed." So call it civil disobedience, call it conscientious objection, call it whatever you want, but I say it's entirely possible to stay home without "throwing your vote away." I've got to believe there's more to free speech than the privilege of picking your poison.

This government didn't give us our rights and our freedoms. God did. That's in the Declaration, too. But what do I know? You're talking to a guy with a "Vote Jesus" t-shirt here.

Jonathan David Morris      Web Site       Contact

Want more opinions? Don't forget the Lady Liberty "Our View" and "Your View" pages!

Lady Liberty's "Their View" Contributors:

R.A. Hawkins
Richard Hawkins was born in Aurora, Colorado and grew up in Littleton, Colorado in a quiet little neighborhood nobody has ever heard of called Columbine Knolls. He has been married to the same woman for twenty-six years, and worked for the same aerospace company for twenty-eight. His primary interests over the years have been his family, sociology, mastering his survival skills, windsurfing, music, politics, raising wolves, art of all types, mycology, perma-culture, archeological anomalies, geo-politics and staying gainfully employed; not necessarily in that order. He often describes himself as a separate subspecies of human – ‘Eclecticus-Iconoclastimus’. His primary driving force is his unwavering belief that as sovereign citizens we are each responsible not only for our own beliefs and actions, but where those beliefs and actions take us in life: That the truly intelligent person learns to determine what the consequences might be for our beliefs and actions and then acts accordingly. Our individual actions always affect far more than we can imagine. R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva," available via Amazon.com. More of Mr. Hawkins' commentaries can be found on his web site, Entropical Paradise.

Jonathan David Morris
Jonathan David Morris is a political writer based in New Jersey. A strong believer in small government, JDM often takes aim at oppressive taxes, entitlements, and laws, writing about incompetence at the highest levels of culture and government. Catch his weekly ramblings on his web site.

Blue Ribbon Campaign
for Free Speech Online

R.A. Hawkins
Why I Still Like Bush
(A Word To The Pseudo-Cons)
 
There has been a consistent tone to the letters I get that amazes me. Now I’m going to get to a few of the thoughts that have been hurled at me as though they were the very lightening bolts of Thor the almighty. My favorite is the view that the Rothschild’s owns Bush. That certainly does explain why he thumbed his nose at Europe, the United Nations and the Communist shill Democrats, and finally accomplished what they had only talked about. Some have said that the Republicans deliver what the Democrats talk about. In the case of stomping Saddam and going after the people behind both WTC attacks, yes this is true. 
 
There are times when I think there is a little more to the Democrats inaction than just cowardice. In 1993 the first WTC bombing “We’ll get them and their little dog too” is pretty much what Clinton and the rest of the Democrats said. They did this without end and it all added up to one simple little thing: a boiling sea of frustration. In the end they cooked the people at Waco, and blamed Christians and talk radio for the Oklahoma bombing. What is another name for that boiling sea of frustration? Fertile ground for demagogues! The weird part is that most of the people who hated Clinton can’t turn off their hatred for Government. Clinton and Company killed all trust between the people and the Government, at least for those who aren’t paying attention to what is going on. Their response is a little too Pavlovian for me.
 
Bush is in the process of bringing stability to the Middle East. To those of you who don’t think there is a need for stability in the Middle East, maybe you can put your money where your mouth is and buy a bicycle instead of an SUV. Our civilization runs on oil just as much as the society described in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ ran on spice. For those of you who say “No blood for oil!” quit depending on oil and replace the blood with sweat. Every time you rant you marginalize yourself a little more.
 
Right now I see, hear and read ad infinitum the words of Europe’s bankers who still hate us and want desperately, like the Democrats, to mean something again. All of their guns of demagoguery are aimed at us and firing relentlessly. Once again the European view of ‘Death to the Jews’ is a little too prevalent for my comfort. They threw them out of Europe and into Israel so they could die there instead of in plain view in Europe. They want us to turn our backs on them as well and leave them to die. If I were in Israel I would be very much inclined to ignore our rants. But they are taking a lot from us now out of need and we are giving it out of need. They wouldn’t be in the mess they are in now if they had wiped out the PLO in Beirut in the 1980’s. They had them surrounded at the airport there and should have finished them off instead of allowing them to become the disruptive power they have become. Neville Chamberlain could talk on that one for hours if he was still around. 
 
Bush gave Europe, the UN, NATO, and the Democrats a chance to validate themselves and they didn’t take it. He did what they had talked about for years. He acted on the intelligence they had ranted about but did nothing with for years and they have the nerve to ask the questions “What did they know and when did they know it?” 
 
There many so called conservatives who are saying we have no business in the Middle East. They are of the belief that one can reason with these people known as terrorists. Right now there is another nation that I call the Neville nation, which thought the same thing. France bent over backwards to enable the terrorists with weapons and even stayed out of the current conflict. Do you know what that got them? The media, who you are now listening to as though they are the greatest, hasn’t bothered to tell you about the threat they are dealing with. They are being blackmailed. ‘If you don’t give us money we’re going to start blowing up your rail system.’ They were lead to one bomb in the warning and were told that was the only warning they would get. Right now they’re walking the rail lines looking for more bombs. They showed themselves to be ‘Nevilles’, and this is their payment. 
 
I know a Jewish kid that grew up in the great state of Georgia. He went to Israel after Arafat had started his stupid little Intifada to go to school and after 9/11 he decided he wasn’t coming back. The last time I emailed him he said he didn’t want to come back because America was awash in wimps and cowards. He will always view this as his country and love it but he is disgusted with the people here. He has come to that conclusion by simply reading our papers and watching our news.
 
America was united briefly after 9/11 and then we went back to whining. We stood tall for a short period until we realized there was a cost to be paid to straighten things out again. Now we have people claiming Bush let it happen. Those are the words of demagogues.

R.A. Hawkins       Web Site       Contact